Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Keep Your Pants On

I've never really caught on to the AIDS fervor that has swept the globe (especially the left side of it). I remember doing a similar analysis in High School and noticing that AIDS rates weren't that impressive compared to the general population. I always wondered why we were funding it so heavily. Cancer and heart disease are much deadlier. Similarly why are we surprised that half the population with AIDS is women? Half the population of damn near anything is women.

I just can't stir up the worry considering that it is so preventable if people would just keep their pants on. Hey! I just solved the AIDS problem and it didn't cost 6 billion dollars a year! My slogan is "AIDS: Keep Your Damn Pants On, Dumbass!" I think the mild profanity will really sell it to the under 18 set, because swearing is cool. Might work even better it the slogan dropped the F-bomb like "AIDS: Fucking Kills." That one works on so many levels, it has that nostalgic Speed Kills vibe for the older folks and profanity and its a double entendre if you play with the punctuation. I am more than willing to settle for a small slice of that 6 billion in compensation for either of these.

As a side note, the same relative/absolute numbers trick is also used to make other things look important. For instance child safety locks on firearms. Care to guess which kills more kids: guns or swimming pools? Swimming pools and it isn't even close. It gets even less close when you only use accidental shooting numbers that locks would prevent and throw out suicides and urban gang shootings. School shootings and a lot of other prominent shootings are similar as well. You would never have known that school shootings were (and are last I checked) on the decline nationally during the mess around Columbine.